1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to gas turbine engines and particularly to a gas turbine engine rotor construction.
2. Background Information
Gas turbine engines, such as those which power aircraft and industrial equipment, employ a compressor to compress air which is drawn into the engine and a turbine to capture energy associated with the combustion of a fuel-air mixture which is exhausted from the engine's combustor. The compressor and turbine employ rotors which typically comprise a multiplicity of airfoil blades mounted on, or formed integrally into the rims of a plurality of disks. The compressor disks and blades are rotationally driven by rotation of the engine's turbine. It is a well-known prior art practice to arrange the disks in a longitudinally axial stack in compressive interengagement with one another which is maintained by a tie shaft which runs through aligned central bores in the disks. It is a common practice to arrange the disks so that they abut one another in the aforementioned axial stack along side edges of the disk rims The disk rims are exposed to working fluid flowing through the engine and therefore, are exposed to extreme heating from such working fluid. For example, in a gas turbine engine high pressure compressor, the rims of the disks are exposed to highly compressed air at highly elevated temperatures. The exposure of disk rims to such elevated temperatures, combined with repeated acceleration and deceleration of the disks resulting from the normal operation of the gas turbine engine at varying speeds and thrust levels may cause the disk rims to experience low cycle fatigue, creep and possibly cracking or other structural damage as a result thereof. This risk of structural damage is compounded by discontinuities inherent in the mounting of the blades on the rims. Such discontinuities may take the form of axial slots provided in the rims to accommodate the roots of the blades or, in the case of integrally bladed rotors wherein the blades are formed integrally with the disks, the integral attachment of the blades to the disks. Such discontinuities result in high mechanical stress concentrations at the locations thereof in the disks, which intensify the risks of structural damage to the disk rims resulting from the low cycle fatigue and creep collectively referred to as thermal-mechanical fatigue, experienced by the disks as noted hereinabove. Moreover, the high compressive forces along the edges of the disk rims due to the mutual abutment thereof in the aforementioned preloaded compressive retention of the disks in an axial stack, further exacerbates the risk of structural damage to the disk rims due to the aforementioned low cycle fatigue and creep.
Therefore, it will be appreciated that minimization of the risk of disk damage due to thermal-mechanical fatigue, and stress concentrations resulting from discontinuities in the disk rim is highly desirable.